MALNUTRITION: Food aid under threat in Yemen as donations dry up

HAJJA, Yemen, June 15 (Reuters) - The flour, oil and sugar which Yemeni mother of five Fairouz gets as food aid three times a month to turn into porridge to supplement her children's meagre diet is not nearly enough to feed her hungry brood.
But by September, it may be gone.
The 36-year-old is among around half a million Yemenis who receive help from the World Food Programme (WFP) in the Arabian peninsula state where efforts to fight persistent hunger are complicated by armed conflict and weak central control.
But the WFP says a drop in donor aid may force it to halt all Yemen operations by the end of August in a move it says could threaten stability. It has already halved rations for those displaced by a northern war to try to stretch aid stocks.
"With the current funding situation, we will have to cease operations by the end of August," said Gian Carlo Cirri, the WFP representative in Yemen, where one in three people suffer from chronic hunger. "The situation is extremely serious."
The WFP says it would need $75 million to continue operations for the duration of 2010 in impoverished Yemen, which is trying at once to cement a truce with northern rebels, quell separatism in the south and fight a resurgent al Qaeda arm.
Growing instability in Yemen is a major global security concern since a Yemen-based regional arm of al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a failed December attempt to bomb a U.S.-bound plane.
Western allies and neighbouring Saudi Arabia fear al Qaeda could exploit poverty and chaos in Yemen to use it as a base for destabilising attacks in the region and beyond. They want Yemen to resolve its domestic conflicts and consolidate power.
But Yemen, strategically located next door to top oil exporter Saudi Arabia but with fewer resources, is also trying to avert economic disaster for many, including around 350,000 displaced by the northern war, most of whom receive WFP support.
Meanwhile, donations to the WFP have fallen sharply as the financial crisis continues to dog many donor countries, Cirri said. In addition, many funds were diverted to Haiti after the Caribbean state was hit by a devastating earthquake in January. That has meant Yemen has had to do with less.
"When you look at the overall humanitarian requirement for Yemen ... It's very cheap to buy stability," Cirri said.
The Yemeni government, however, said the stability threat was an exaggeration.
"I think this ... was intended to pressure the government and the donors to fulfil the needs of the programme," Hisham Sharaf Abdalla, deputy minister for planning and international cooperation, said of the instability worries.
"But no leadership or government in the world would accept a lack of stability," he added.
WHAT MAY HAPPEN
Perched on breathtakingly beautiful craggy mountaintops, vertigo-inducing cliffs or nestled in dramatic valleys, Hajja's villages are often isolated and difficult to access, especially without vehicles.
Already, WFP aid reaches only a fifth of the 3.1 million Yemenis estimated to need support. For Hajja's inhabitants, news that the WFP may soon stop assisting their area does not bode well.
Yemen has one of the worst malnutrition rates in the world, competing only with countries such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh and India. More than 40 percent of its 23 million inhabitants live on less than $2 a day, and poverty is rising fast.
Hajja's inhabitants keep livestock and till terraced fields, often cultivating not food but qat, a mild narcotic leaf that dominates Yemeni life but also requires extensive irrigation in a country with chronic water shortages.
Yemen does have anti-qat awareness programmes, but development experts say it is difficult to persuade farmers to give up the lucrative crop since it is so vital to their income.
"This is a poor area, it has few resources," said Saleh Ahmed Nassar, who heads Hajja's nutritional programme.
Hajja's mayor said the WFP's looming pullout comes as the town's needs are growing fast and he too is worried about the potential effects on his area which is already one of the poorest in the country.
The WFP says if it pulls out, food insecurity and child mortality would rise, and people would be forced to migrate.
But the Yemeni government says the main humanitarian emergency in the country centres around the people displaced by the recently ended conflict in the northern province of Saada.
"There will be no such exaggerated scenarios," Abdalla said. "The only emergency situation are the refugees in Saada, and the Yemeni government with the help of donors will deal with it."
The WFP is in talks with Sanaa and donors to gain access to $4.7 billion in aid money pledged as long ago as 2006, the lion's share of which has yet to be distributed, Cirri said.
He said any savings the WFP may have had for Yemen have already been used up, and that there was no other option now but for the donors to step up to the plate.
"I want to believe that the donor community will realise that it's worth (helping) and if it is not done then the situation could really further deteriorate," he said.
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